


The Hazards of Love

by too_much_in_the_sun



Category: Maximum Ride - James Patterson
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Angst, F/M, Gen, Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25374550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/too_much_in_the_sun/pseuds/too_much_in_the_sun
Summary: Post-FANG. Max is growing up and moving on - but someone from her past reappears in her life, and everything changes.Covers the months and years after Fang leaves.Mostly gen, but there's one Fang/Max scene.
Relationships: Fang/Maximum "Max" Ride
Kudos: 1





	1. one week

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written to a prompt, but it's long lost and I got off track almost immediately.

_one week_

* * *

As so often lately, Dylan was the reason I ran into my room and slammed the door. And yes, this is Maximum Ride talking, tough girl extraordinaire. I figure I'm allowed to act my age once in a while, especially given I'd lost Fang just a week ago.

Yeah. Lost. It hurt to think he'd promised to come back to me, so I preferred to just think of him as _gone._ Sure, he'd been my right wing, my other half, the best and only friend I'd ever had, but he wasn't going to return to me in the foreseeable future just because I wished he would.

He'd said twenty years. It might as well be twenty lifetimes. If either of us lived that long we'd be thirty-four, and I was barely fifteen now. And that was one big if.

It was all Dylan's fault. Fang leaving. Me falling to pieces every ten seconds.

Worst, two strangers living with the reduced flock -- Dylan I could handle. Having Jeb breathe my air was intolerable. He knew better than to open his mouth, but far too often I saw a look of pity in his eyes.

No one pities Maximum Ride and lives.

I couldn't exactly kick him out, though. According to Angel he had nowhere to go. I didn't care about that. Let _him_ live on the streets for a while, see how it feels.

The other thing she said was that he had to stay with us for a while. She wouldn't say why, in typical Angel fashion, but she did insist he stay.

I wasn't quite ready to trust her after the whole incident with Doctor G-H, but Jeb was out of commission for the moment. With one and a half working arms and no weapons, he didn't stand a chance against six mutant children.

Given how oddly quiet he seemed lately, he might not even fight back...

I threw myself down on the bed and screamed into the pillow. It didn't help much, but I did feel a little better getting some of my anger and frustration out of my system. If only I had a Fang-shaped punching bag.

I'd wear it out in a few hours.

I heard a knock on the door.

"Max, are you okay?" Dylan called.

Dylan was the absolute _last_ person I wanted to see. I couldn't keep Jeb out since he had a direct line in with the Voice, but Dylan... Dylan I could and would keep out.

I threw my alarm clock at the door, making a satisfyingly loud bang.

"Go away, Dylan!"

There was a pause, and then I heard his footsteps creak away down the stairs.

Good riddance.

Right after Fang left, Dylan had been unusually nice to me. Now, every time I turned around he was trying to help me with something. Or complimenting me. Or trying to hug me.

Maximum Ride doesn't _hug_. Especially not some idiot who thinks he can just replace Fang.

Newsflash: nobody replaces Fang.


	2. six months

_six months_

* * *

By now there was nothing left of him except his laptop. Dylan was sleeping in his room, wearing some of his old clothes where Dylan's had become too ragged for even one of us to wear.

I'd gotten better at pretending everything was okay, but there were mornings when I woke up in tears. Fang would have noticed.

Jeb had vanished. I didn't know or care where he'd gone. I was just happy to have him out of my house.

Mom was visiting for a week while Ella was on fall break. I put on my best cheerful face, but you know moms. She knew something was up.

"Max, is everything okay?" she said worriedly.

I pulled away from her on the couch. "Mom, I'm fine." I forced a smile. "I'm getting over the flu."

"All right," she said, and it looked as if she was about to say something when Nudge and Ella ran past, covered in soot. They were closely followed by Iggy and Gazzy, giggling in a way that presaged nothing good.

"Gotta run!" I said, and jumped up from the couch. For once, the boys' pyromaniacal antics were saving me from something.

As it turned out, they'd made the discovery that nail polish is flammable when wet, and in discovering this had accidentally ignited one of their other projects.

They were so grounded.

It all seemed so normal -- the boys causing havoc, me having to solve it.

But it still felt like there was a hole in my heart -- one shaped like a six-foot-tall, dark, and handsome birdkid.

_He isn't coming back, Maximum._

Great. All my other problems, and now here was the Voice butting in, too.

_I don't have the time, Jeb. Out of my head. Shoo._

The Voice didn't answer, but I did have to acknowledge -- silently and only to myself -- that it had voiced one of my secret fears.

I could wait twenty years, if I could be sure that at the end I'd see Fang again.

If he wasn't going to be there, though, what was it worth?


	3. two years

_two years_

* * *

It had been a long day. Iggy had shown a spark of maturity and watched over everyone else for most of the day -- I'd been busy taking my GED.

Yes. I, Maximum Ride, had studied for the equivalent of a high school diploma.

Nudge still believed that we could get by on nothing but luck and being our winged selves, but I was seventeen and getting bitter. With a GED, I could get a job. Maybe pay for the younger kids to go to regular school and have the chance I'd never gotten.

So I'd studied and slaved over my textbooks, stressed out over a test in a hot room (I could swear the air conditioning was broken, jeezum), and now I was at home in bed, just about ready to pass out.

I closed my eyes with a sigh.

And then I reopened them. Someone touched my cheek.

I blinked a few times, and my vision cleared. Fang was sitting at the end of my bed.

"Fang?" I pressed my palms against my eyelids. "No. You're gone."

One side of his lips curled -- the Fang version of a smile. "Yeah. This is a dream."

I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. "Then go away. I don't want to have this dream again."

He leaned in and kissed me, his lips all warm silk against mine. He was starting to grow a little stubble, and it rasped against my cheek as we kissed.

That scared me; it reinforced the physical fact that despite my dreams, we were both getting older. And who knew when, or if, we might expire?

He pressed a brief kiss to my cheek and whispered in my ear.

"I love you, Max."

Three words I loved hearing from his lips.

I felt tears trembling in my eyes. "I need you," I whispered back.

He sat up straight, gazing at my face. He brought one hand up and brushed away a tear I hadn't felt fall. "Still saving the world?"

"I just took the GED," I told him, and a frown creased his brow.

"You can't quit, Max. The world needs you."

Hadn't I heard someone say that before? The words rang oddly coming from the lips of the boy who had once told me he'd like to just live on a private island, me and him and the flock.

Looking at him, I saw he wasn't a boy anymore. The Fang I'd known was gone forever. In his place was a man I hardly knew.

"People keep saying that to me." I scrubbed at my eyes with the back of one hand. I still felt fourteen inside, and he looked... older. "I'm not as strong as I used to be. All I can do is save my family."

He just looked at me. There was something odd about his eyes. The look in them. "You've always been strong. I know you can do it."

"Come back." Without him I could manage a family. To save a world, I needed him back.

He stood up. "I can't," he answered. "There's not much time left in the world, Max. You can't afford to waste any pining after me."

"I can't do it without you," I snapped, and got out of bed, facing him in my bare feet and pajamas.

For once, I could see emotion in his face. He looked at me like an adult looking at a child. "You'll have to."

"What do I have to do?" I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. Nobody challenges my abilities. Not even Fang.

"You won't remember if I tell you now," he said, with a sad little half-smile. He took a step back towards the door. "You'll find out when you wake up. I've arranged for that much."

"Don't go," I said as he turned to leave.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I have to." He half-turned back, giving me his face. "Max... don't pine over me any more. I'm dead."

"I'm not pining," I spat, trying to be menacing in an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. "I'm remembering you."

"If you have to remember me..." He gave me that little half-smile again. "Save the world for me."

He was gone before I could blink, and before I woke up, I remembered what I'd seen in his eyes.

Looking at me like he knew everything, he'd looked like a younger version of Jeb.


	4. five years

_five years_

* * *

I never had learned to stop missing Fang, even though he was dead to all of us now. There was a gravestone in the backyard back at the house... well, a stone, anyway. We knew well enough what and who it stood for.

As far as saving the world went, I thought I was doing pretty good. The instructions dream-Fang had promised me three years ago had come from the Voice the next morning.

Sadly, they didn't involve violence. Well. Not as much as I would've liked, anyway.

I brushed stray hair out of my eyes. I was sweaty and covered in grime. It was only nine in the morning, and the temperature was already sky-high.

I was working with the CSM on installing improved solar panels here in the Nevada desert. Sure, the weather was terrible, but I didn't mind the work and they didn't ask questions. I was Valencia Martinez's daughter, and that was all anyone had to know.

Helping people convert to non-oil sources of energy had been one of the instructions relayed to me by the Voice. It hadn't said how I was supposed to do that, so I'd asked Mom for help. I know. Maximum Ride asking for help. Stop the presses.

But as it turned out, the CSM was working on just the kind of projects I needed to publicize.

Nudge's idolization of popularity was finally coming in handy. Getting my hands dirty working, and lending my voice to the many supporting alternative energy, I could kind of believe I was helping save the world.

Africa had been a hard awakening for me. At the time I'd had too much to think about to understand its true significance, but as time passed, I began to understand. Saving the world wasn't about beating up scientists, or even about protesting. It was about making a stand, making an individual difference. Making _my_ stand -- as Nudge had known since we first started showing up in tabloids, and as I had only recently come to see, our fame was a two-edged sword. I could use it for good, to promote a cause I believed in, or I could just be one of a million celebrities who didn't do anything special except be famous.

_I'm Maximum Ride,_ I thought wryly, turning another shovelful of dirt. _I_ _have_ _to be special._

My 'plan' was kind of working, as it happened. Five years without my prime co-conspirator had forced me to come up with ideas entirely by myself, without much of anyone to bounce them off of. I'd still managed to make alternative energy a 'cool' cause; it helped that Nudge was very publically learning to drive in a cute little electric car, while Iggy was helping to design more efficient steam engines.

What would Fang have been doing? I had to wonder. Gas was hovering around the four-dollar mark again, more in the Gulf and the major cities. Even my island-loving boy couldn't have denied that something had to be done. Would he be out here working with me?

I leaned on the handle of the shovel. He wouldn't a boy any longer, if he were still alive. He'd be twenty, almost old enough to drink.

Five years apart would have changed him, maybe beyond recognition. If he were to walk in front of me right now...

_Stop it, Max,_ I told myself, and started digging again. You have to root the base of a row of panels pretty deep, and we were also going to be running wires through the earth to help them power each other on cloudy days. _You've changed too._

I might not recognize him as he was now, but I knew that he wouldn't recognize me. I was tan from working in the sun, and I'd grown a few inches in the last gasp of my growth spurt. My hair was cut short, almost invisible under my dorky sun hat, and sunglasses covered my eyes.

Besides those physical changes, I was a different person than I'd been when we'd known each other.

My phone buzzed, saving me from any more obsession over someone who I'd sworn was dead to me (and yet who I couldn't keep off my mind).

I pulled it out of my pocket, glanced at the screen to see who was calling. Not a number I recognized, and for a moment, I considered hanging up.

Then I reconsidered. Maybe it was a telemarketer, but given my life history, that was supremely unlikely.

"Hey, it's Max," I said cheerily, but I barely got past 'hey' before a voice interrupted me.

"Max? I'm sorry, but I need your help."

I knew that raspy voice, though I hadn't heard it in a long time. "Forget it, Fang."

I heard a sigh and the rattle of static. "It's Jeb."

I didn't give him the dignity of an answer.

"Look, forget it," he rasped. "Forget I called. I'm sorry I bothered you."

He hung up on me.

Huh. Well, _that_ was unusual.

I hadn't seen him in almost five years. Why would he call me now?

When I got back home that day -- well, the motel room that was passing for home these days -- the first thing I did was Google the phone number he'd called from. I knew his voice too well to think it was just some prank caller -- my number is unlisted, and until now I'd thought only the flock and Mom knew it.

And I'd known him well enough to know that if we shared any characteristic, it was a refusal to ask anyone for help.

* * *

He woke up in the smell of alcohol. Usually when that happened he was face down on his desk in a lab he didn't recognize with preservative spilled everywhere after a late-night bout of shaky hands. But there was a pillow under his head, a real one, not a notebook or his arm, and he was in a bed, not slumped over a desk.

He opened his eyes and saw her there, the radio on and playing music, scrubbing her palms with something that reeked of bad vodka. The chair she was sitting in was coming apart at the seams, slowly decohering.

She didn't notice him, only kept scrubbing and humming to the music. She inspected her palm, slipped into whistling along with the tune.

She hadn't gotten _that_ from him. He couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

A lump of wet alcohol-smelling cotton thunked into the trashcan by his head. His lips were dry, he realized. And his mouth tasted like one part hangover to three parts of hopeless.

The radio clicked over to the soft murmur of a deejay -- probably reading off the song title or something -- as she bandaged her palms, gauze held on by a wrap of surgical tape. She flexed her fingers, clenching her hands into fists and hyperextending the joints.

There had been a point when he would have been very proud to see her doing something like this. Look. She has normal mobility, and the foresight to make sure her bandages won't restrict her movement. She's smart enough to clean her wounds so they won't get infected.

Now he just felt slightly ill, and very old. He'd been bandaging her scraped knees yesterday.

The room seemed to be rocking side to side when he closed his eyes again, but he couldn't hear waves. So he wasn't on a boat.

She seemed to have noticed him being awake; he heard footsteps as she got up and threw something away, then the sigh of abused springs as she sat back down.

"You're awake."

"You're not trying to kill me," he said, and dammit, the room was spinning now. More of a light drift to the left, but still highly distracting. "Therefore, I'm dreaming."

"You're not worth killing." The radio burst out in static and she turned it down. "Feeling any better? Last time Mom checked you had a pretty high fever."

There was only one woman he knew of who Max would ever call Mom.

So. Val was here.

"I hope you got the plates on that truck that hit me," he said. Even through closed eyelids the lights were too bright. This was absolutely not real.

The real Max would have left him... whereever he'd been before this. He couldn't remember where that was. His lab, probably; he seemed to recall spending a lot of time there lately.

Max sighed. "Since you're not asking, I'll just tell you. You're in the guest room at Mom's house in Arizona. The reason you're not somewhere else is because you told me, and I quote, 'no hospitals' when I picked you up."

He remembered calling her, faintly. For a moment it had seemed like a good idea to call for help, and then immediately after like an even better idea to just go it alone.

"How did you find me?" He hadn't given an address; he was pretty sure of that.

"You called me twice, Jeb." The radio started to crackle an insurance pitch and she turned it off entirely. "The second time you gave me an address."

He opened his eyes a sliver in time to see her lean forward, elbows on her knees and hands folded under her chin. "So tell me, Jeb, does that place always look like a meth lab, or did I just come at a bad time?"

_It didn't look like a meth lab last time._

But then again, how long had it been since he'd really _seen_ anything -- even what his own lab really looked like? It had taken him weeks to notice the spray of blood down the front of his lab coat, after all.

"I have to pay the rent."

"It looked like you were living there." She shrugged. "Not like I really care," she said, and leaned back in her chair. "But I didn't think letting you die there would be the right thing to do. You rescued me once, so I rescued you. We're even."

But she'd spent her first ten years living little better than a lab rat, a feral child in cages and tiny rooms. He should have gotten her out the day she was born. Instead he'd been weak, had waited and waited for far too long.

She couldn't repay that weakness by saving him from himself; this time around, he deserved what was coming to him.

"We'll never be even," he said.


	5. the night after

(the night after)

* * *

His dreams were all the same.

Every corner he turned, she was fleeing from him; every haunted face he saw was hers.

She didn't understand that she was dead. _Come back._ She pleaded with him, as if he had the power to change anything. _I need you here._

_I can't_ , he said, but the words wouldn't leave his mouth. _I can't stay_.

Sometimes she brought Ari with her, and he was always the same: a towheaded boy of seven, with hazel-dark eyes in a watchful face. _Ari wants you to stay, love. Do you remember when he was born?_

He did -- how could he forget? The images were blurring with time, but he remembered what Doctor Merritt had said, as he'd watched Ari fighting for life.

_You owe us your son's life._ And the subtext: ( _he belongs to us_ ).

They hadn't been able to save his wife, only his infant son.

His family's faces were never quite clear; Amelia's a blur of sweet smile and lovely eyes, Ari's a bright smear of eyes and mistrust and blond hair.

_What do you have to return to?_

She stared at him across the kitchen table, all wide eyes and pain. _Tell me, Jeb -- what keeps you away from us?_

He couldn't meet her gaze. _I don't know._

She turned from him, crossing her arms, watching Ari out in the yard. _Then come back. We need you._

Her words were always the same -- _I need you, we need you, Ari needs you._ _Come back._

And his responses were always the same, always inadequate.

_I can't stay_. He reached out, trying to comfort her. _I'm sorry, darling._

_You never spent any time with us,_ she said.

_Of course I did_.

_Do you think I don't know?_ She spread her arms, indicating the house. _I only stay here because I'm waiting for you._

He took her hand. _I'm sorry. I still have work to do._

_Ari knows he's dead._

_This is a dream_. He stood up, looked for the door. There had to be a way out.

Often she tried to restrain him, but tonight she watched him go.

_I'm not a dream,_ she said. _Only a ghost._

_What do you have to live for?_

He woke up struggling out of the dream, forcing himself into waking life.

To see her face again, he could stand a little heartbreak.

* * *

Max woke, and for a moment it was as though he'd only just left.


	6. morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, there's a transmisogynistic reference in the first couple of paragraphs. 
> 
> I've chosen not to redact it - in the process of importing my old works I've chosen to leave them as they were when they were written, rather than erase their faults - but it wouldn't be fair to not warn for it. 
> 
> If you'd rather not see it, scroll to the second line break and start with "At fourteen..."

(morning)

* * *

The thing that made it hard to give up on Fang entirely was the fact that he wouldn't leave me alone.

Yeah, I know. Physically he was who knew where, doing who knew what. He could be dead, he could be in jail, he could be hooking up with a thirty-seven-year-old transvestite named Phil.

My subconscious still refused to let him go.

The human subconscious -- or avian-human, in my case -- is fairly unoriginal. We dream about things we see when we're awake, repurposed to serve new ends.

Fang had been in my life every day for fourteen years, and a few weeks of a fifteenth. He played a role in almost every dream I'd ever had.

Five years after the last time I'd seen his face in person, he was still in my dreams –- a blurry face in a crowd, a silent presence at my side.

* * *

At fourteen, Max had looked like Val.

At nineteen-going-on-twenty, she no longer did. Her hair, once dark from days on end inside, was sun-bleached and cut short. She was taller than he remembered, almost taller than he was.

She had the same eyes, but he'd seen that one coming.

“I wouldn't recommend getting up yet,” she said without looking, standing bent over the desk looking at something. “Or if you do, I'm not gonna clean you off the floor.”

_Eyes in the back of her head._

She'd probably heard the springs creak when he sat up. He shifted his weight off of his left arm – as ever, that shoulder was stiff, though not yet painful.

They'd been honest with him once he was lucid enough after the surgery to ask questions.

_80% recovery if you're lucky_ , the surgeon had said, looking him up and down. (He was well aware how unimpressive he looked – mangy, unshaven, and with his ass hanging out the back of a hospital gown – but did the man really have to rub it in?)

_I'm not a very lucky person._

Obviously not – it doesn't take _luck_ to take a bullet for someone who could shrug off a wound like his with a good meal and a few days' recovery time. But pride required him to put in a word against his stupidity.

_Will I ever play the violin again?_ Jeb said, making a stab at humor.

_Only if you could play it before,_ he replied, moving for the door.

Standard repartee, but even then he'd been aware that 80% was an optimistic estimate. A _very_ optimistic estimate.

As it was – he moved his arm gently backward and forward, swiveling it in the joint – he had come out on the bad side of things (again). He had left himself too little recovery time before putting stress on the joint, and here he was five years later.

Max straightened up, taking the papers from the desk and tapping them into a neat pile before laying them aside. She glanced at him. “How's your arm?”

“Fine,” he said. Strictly speaking, it wasn't a lie. It didn't feel like there were nails driven into the joint, and his hand wasn't entirely numb. Comparatively speaking, the hand at least was better than it had been for a long time – today he probably stood a fair chance at being able to not drop things held in that hand.

Not quite as much, anyway.

She raised her eyebrows. “It didn't look fine last night.”

“Yeah?”

“You almost decked Mom when she tried to take your pulse,” she said absently, sitting down in the chair to pull on a surprisingly heavy-looking pair of work boots.

“Ah.” Well, that made them even, then. And it had only taken a quarter of a century. “So you're going to work, then?”

She clapped a helmet on her head. “Yep.” There was a vest folded on one corner of the desk, and she slung it over her shoulder.

Max working construction.

_That_ he had never considered.

He watched her moving around, picking up her gloves. Well. There probably weren't many fathers who _did_ think of their little girls going into construction.

She'd wanted to be an astronaut.

“Mom will show up at some point to make sure you're not going to die on us,” she informed him, her hand on the doorknob. “The bathroom is the door that doesn't come out to the hallway or a closet. Your stuff's in that closet, by the way.” She checked her phone for the time. “I'll be back around six.”

She paused, looking at him with a faint smile – then the smile widened into a grin and she slipped her phone back into her pocket, making a finger-gun with her free hand. ( _And such are the liberties of those with two functioning arms._ ) “Don't go anywhere.”

“I won't,” he muttered.

“Good. I'm not driving out to find your ass again. See you.” She slipped out, leaving him there.

He sighed, brushed the back of his left hand against his forehead. Christ, but he had a headache.

Why had she bothered to save him? What good could he do her? He sat up straighter and cradled his left hand in his lap as he flexed the fingers, looking at himself with sour clarity.

She'd phrased her choice as a kind of atonement – he had saved her once. More than once, actually, and she'd picked a poor time to repay him.

He forced his hand to form a fist, ring finger and pinky following the others recalcitrantly. There were exercises he was supposed to do, but he'd long since given up the pretense, and he was finally paying the price; over time, the little mobility and strength he did have left in that arm were fading.

He didn't really want the use of his left arm back, anyway. Lately he'd even been neglecting the lab-safety rules that had been dinned into him for so long. He didn't care anymore – it didn't matter if he couldn't use his hand, or if he died.

Max – and Val, apparently – seemed to think it did.

The door opened, and he looked up.

_Oh, that was a bad move._ He felt suddenly seasick.

Val was standing in the doorway, looking faintly amused and much older than she had last time he'd seen her.

“So I'll gather you're still nauseous?”

“I was nauseous last night?” Memory loss wasn't a good sign, but he could deal with it.

“I'd say so.” She shut the door behind her. “You almost threw up on me.”

“Sorry about that.”

“I've had worse.” She shrugged, then smiled, wielding a thermometer. “Now, to business. You know the drill, put it under your tongue.”

He took the thermometer with his right hand, leaving the left in his lap. Best not to let her know that weakness... or at least to keep a little vanity.

“How's the arm?” she said, once he had the thermometer in place.

He mumbled around the glass tube. “Fine.”

“Doesn't look like it. Let me see you move it.”

He winced, but raised it, making a ninety-degree angle to his torso.

“Fingers,” she commanded.

“I thought you were a _vet_.” He rotated his wrist, clenched his hand into a fist and then relaxed it, brutally aware of how awkward and slow his movements were.

“That doesn't prevent me from examining you. Put your arm down, and give me that thermometer.”

He obeyed, and she looked at the temperature, tisking. “Hundred one. Symptoms?” She took his right wrist in her hand, glancing at the desk clock as she moved to take his pulse.

“None.” He cradled his hand in his lap again.

“There has to be something.”

“Fatigue,” he admitted. He had to think for a moment. “Muscle ache. I'm cold.” He sighed. “I have the flu.”

“Good man,” she said crisply. “Your pulse is normal, by the way. 80 beats per minute.”

“Fantastic.”

She sat down at the desk. “So. Other than the flu... how are you?”

He hesitated. _Fine_ wouldn't suffice – with Val it never did. “I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

“Your arm's not getting any better.”

He blinked. “How did you even find out about that?”

“I was there.”

“Right.” Of course she'd been. _You weren't the only one in trouble, you self-centered idiot._

She tilted her head and pursed her lips. “But back to the arm. The last time I saw you you were making a pretty good recovery. What happened?”

“I've been busy,” he muttered. _Yeah. Busy working in illegal labs to pay the rent on a cockroach-infested shithole of an apartment._

“You never used to be too busy to take basic care of yourself.” She sighed. “Don't tell me you're busy working on an army of killer robots or a walking nuclear death tank or something.”

“You overestimate me.”

She shook her head, and despite the grey in her hair she looked a little like her old self – the pretty punk girl he'd once known. He half-expected her old bright-blue highlights to be there, just a little faded. “What happened to you? I used to have to keep you from doing crazy shit like that. Suddenly you're all... boring.”

“I got old, Valentine.” He looked her in the eye, wishing he had his glasses. It's hard to be intimidating when you can hardly see the person you're facing off with. “All that mad-science bullshit is a game for the young.”

“Oh yeah?” The old glint came back to her eyes, and he had to restrain himself from checking to be sure he wasn't wearing that _stupid_ plaid shirt, one of dozens that had populated his wardrobe when they'd been dating. “You still have time, bucko. What are you gonna do with the rest of your life? Play golf?”

“I hate golf.” She knew that.

“I know that.” She sat back in her chair, satisfied. “What if... I gave you a challenge?”

“What kind of challenge?” Despite whatever notions she had, he was about seven years too old to get up to any of his old ninja-grandmaster-style shenanigans.

“Nothing too dangerous.”

“We have different standards of dangerous.”

“True,” she acknowledged. “But I need you to do something for me. You owe me, remember?”

“I wish I didn't.” He owed her a lot, actually – even though there were only so many times you could tangle with the law over a woman before it became a lot saner to just break up with her.

“You need to be with Max.”

“I'm sorry?”

She waved one hand negligently – oh, and she was the one who called _him_ a mad scientist. “To be a real father to her. She thinks she's over that jerk she was with, but she's not.”

“Who, Fang?”

“Yeah. She's never dated anyone else.”

_That's my daughter_ , he thought dismally. Keeping grudges ran in the family. “And what am I supposed to do? Father-daughter dance? Take her fishing?”

“That's for you to decide.” She rose from her chair, then came over and patted him on the shoulder. “You can wait until you're not sick to get started, though.”

“Thanks a lot.”


	7. afternoon

(afternoon)

* * *

_What are you running from_?

He sat at her kitchen table, resting his head on his hands – the fingers of his left hand were curled clawlike against the palm, cramped and painful. He'd tried to exercise the muscles, pushed too far, and here he was – unwanted visitor, stranger in a familiar house.

He never had known what moderation was.

_What do you have to fear_?

There was nothing left for him here. Or in life in general, really. Once you slid far enough down the scale to be working in something kissing-cousins to a meth lab, you were pretty far on the way to becoming an unperson, a body in the local Potter's Field.

Fear wasn't worth it anymore. He'd gotten tired of it somewhere around the time he had the side of his head clawed open by an angry Eraser; from that point on, it was all old hat. Feeling claws scrape against the bone of your skull, millimeters from the soft brain beneath... after that, there wasn't much left to fear.

For almost half his life, Jeb had considered himself the walking dead. Perhaps it was melodramatic of him, but after the first illegal act, the first steps outside the law, he'd begun to think of himself as already partly dead.

They can't hurt you if you're dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a flawed fic, but I came across it while archiving things from fanfiction.net and thought "this isn't entirely bad, I should put it on AO3". So here it is, this is as far as I ever got.
> 
> Original note for this chapter:
> 
> While I first and foremost must credit James Patterson for creating the universe I've used here, there are also a few others who deserve credit.
> 
> The title I borrowed from an excellent album by the Decemberists -- I felt it fit with the theme of the piece.
> 
> The dream sequence in "two years" owes quite a lot to a similar sequence in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", so I have to pay a major tribute to James Cameron and William Wisher, who wrote the script I used as a reference. Specifically, the line "There's not much time left in the world" is a direct quotation -- it fit so well I couldn't help but use it.
> 
> Writing this fic has been an interesting exercise in working within Max's point of view more, which I don't often do.

**Author's Note:**

> [Posted on fanfiction.net](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6155645/1/The-Hazards-of-Love) between 18 July and 29 August, 2010. Archived to AO3, 18 July 2020.


End file.
